Pruckermayr, Nicole

The eye of the camera rambles over greek ruins, over landscape and – every now and then – over a single person. This person is also there. She shared a lifetime with the person behind the
camera, but she never is/was in the main focus. The basis of the video is found footage material of a holiday home movie. The quality of the movie is left unchanged. The shadows and after-images are contemporary witnesses, emphasising the plasticity and complexity of the temporal structure.
Twenty-nine years after the shooting of this holiday-movie, my grandfather (the man behind the camera) tells the story how he was introduced to my grandmother (the woman in the movie) and how and why they married. These two situations are presented in a condensed form and while the
appear to be common situations, they are not. They take place at the end of World War II and are located in France, Germany and Czechia, more precisely the former Sudetenland.
They bring up the issue of freedom of choice in human relations.
The video is structured by several temporal layers. The earliest layer is the one of the narrative, that is mirrored by the visual layer, which takes place at a later (though still past) time. At the same time, the act of telling and remembering brings it into the present. This is emphasised by the ambient sound layer that is audible throughout the video.
It is a recording of the now empty flat of the couple, where I take care of the left plants and objects.
Correlations between the narrative and the ambient sounds – while being arbitrary and unplanned – intensify the story and once again stir up the relations of time.